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Geography and Geology To understand the geography of Norwich River Valley you need to appreciate just how low-lying it is. One way would be to imagine floating on your lilo down the River Wensum towards New Mills at Barn Road. Since leaving Fakenham 50 km upstream, the river has fallen 33 vertical metres - that's an average gradient of 1 in 500. The next 40 km will be the final part of its journey to the sea at Great Yarmouth, but it will fall less than two metres in all that distance, that's 1 in 20,000. From a geological point of view this tells us that Norwich is pretty well at the head of the estuary - beyond Acle used to be all sea! |
About half of that two metre fall happens as you whoosh down the weir at New Mills,
first built across the river about 600 years ago and thus fixing the highest point you can get to by boat from the sea.
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